Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been used in applications, such as surveillance and agriculture, for years. Some UAVs are capable of performing tasks autonomously, while others require human operators to control them. For example, autonomous UAVs may be launched with instructions to perform certain mission tasks—such as navigating to a destination, taking photos, etc.—and can perform these tasks without human intervention.
In existing UAV systems, human operators are usually connected to vehicles in a one-to-one relationship. With such relationships, the systems assume that a single human operator will always be reliable and available to intervene on the behalf of the autonomous vehicles, should the need arise. Such one-to-one systems are not fault-tolerant, though, as human operators can become unavailable, communication links can fail, and the like.